Good article

From BBC.

New game in town

What particle are you?

Psycho

Watched Psycho over the weekend. It is probably the most famous Hitchcock movie, and was on my list since long. The first half is somewhat slow, but the part towards the end will surely send chills down your spine. A must watch if you watch movies at all.

Little old trick

I hope your job does not require you to be able to calculate squares quickly. Mine doesn't. But in case it does, here is a little trick for relatively small numbers.

First thing is to memorize squares upto 25. Schools generally hammer these into your brain, so that's a reasonable requirement I guess.

Suppose the number is between 25 and 50. Let's express it as 25+n, 25>n>0. Get the square of 25-n (now that you remember it). Take it and add 100n. Voila.
Let's take an example. Suppose you want to square 43.
43=25+n, n=18
25-18=7 whose square is 49. add 100n=18*100=1800 to it.
Answer is 1849.

Next step. Suppose the number lies between 50 and 100. Let's say 73.
73=50+n, n=23
So let's first find square of 50-n=27.
27 lies between 0 and 50 so you can use the trick mentioned above to find it if necessay.
Anyway it is 729.
Add to that 200n=4600. So 4600+729=5329, the required answer.
Note here we multiplied by 200 (as 'base' is 50, not 25), rest is same.

You can go on for x=100+n but then the amount of backtracking takes a little longer. And you have to multiply by 400.

The explanation of why this works is pretty simple, but it will be lengthy (in fact I started this post with it, but it just kept growing, and not to mention blogger is terrible with formatting), so I'll skip it.

It's 00:28

I am listening. 'The man from earth' has such a beautiful background score. I wish I knew more about music.

Incoherent bambling

There are things that touch your soul in ways you can't describe. Watching 'The man from earth' had that effect today. And not for the first time. What moves you is the crux of your identity, and as it gets overpowered by the dross of everyday life, it felt really good to glimpse it once more.

A question

Have you ever become tired of playing the maturity game?

Blogger forced me

I was doing something very simple and blogger loses my template. That is why the new look. I had wanted to pick something from the classic templates, but it then throws away data (eg my painstakingly crafted link lists) too. New look courtesy mercy of blogger.

Genuine, primal hunger

Genuine, primal hunger scrambles your brain to such an extent that the result is blog posts about genuine primal hunger scrambling your brain to such an extent that the result is blog posts about genuine primal hunger scrambling your brain and so on.

Most C programmers have struggled with this

Sure I did. Good article about byte order (and why it doesn't matter) from Rob Pike.

Enjoy!

Universe/Fate/Whatever...

You just don't think I have enough frustrations.. Do you?

Counter Clock world

Counter clock world is one of the strangest I have ever been to. I was a little skeptical before beginning the journey; you see, The divine invasion had not made much of an impression on me. But this one increased my respect for Philip K Dick a lot.

Now about the strangeness. In this world, time has reversed itself, something called the Hobart Phase. The dead reform in their coffins, and knock and ask to be let out. There are businesses doing just that, selling the deaders (as they are called) to the highest bidder. People say 'Goodbye' when they pickup the phone, 'Hello' just before they hangup. 'Smoking' cigarette butts converts them to full length cigarettes. A religious leader is about to be reborn, and the story revolves around the consequences.

Despite the strangeness, the plot is quite plausibly developed and the narrative is fast paced. A good read, but probably only for 'serious' readers (but don't ask me to define that).

Another mighty mathematician you never heard of

Dattatraya Ramchandra Kaprekar.